My amazing friend, former landlady, and artist, Roberta, shared this story with me. My suspicion is that the term 'shrub' really did refer to many things other than what has survived as a shrub to this day. Especially since both shrubs and raspberry lemonade were popular at the same time. Regardless, I love this story!
My grandmother used to make a thing she called shrub that is quite different from what you describe in this "Latest...". When I was a kid growing up on the Puget Sound our neighbors had a tennis court sized patch of raspberries which fruited twice a year and our neighbor would beg to have help picking at the peek of the seasons. When my mother's mom, Grandma Dora would come to visit she requested the ripest of berries which she combined with sugar and I'm not sure of the proportions, and let them stand at room temperature so they could "bleed" as she put it. Then she would strain out the seeds with a gauze diaper (what she and my mother always used in place of cheese cloth) add a little water and again I'm not sure of the ratio to juice and then make lemonade with the raspberry juice as the liquid. So actually this is raspberry lemonade, but it was absolutely fantastic and she called it shrub.
I am so tempted to try this - it will have to wait until next year, hopefully by then I will have found my great-grandfather's black raspberry canes. Also I love that Roberta's grandmother used a diaper instead of cheesecloth - much like I refuse to use cheesecloth and use flour sack towels myself.
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